The popular online dating site Okcupid.com has made available some very interesting data on how race and religion affect their matchmaking results. There are a couple of caveats when looking at the results. The first one is that, as the site notes, their definition of a good match is based on criteria that are supplied by the users themselves by answering loads of questions on what they like in a mate. This is as opposed to actually waiting until after a couple gets together and asking them how much they like each other. This means that the match percentages will be thrown off if the users either aren’t competent at analyzing what qualities turn them on in a mate or aren’t honest enough to admit them.

The second caveat is that the distribution of their data reflects the demographics of their registered users. Since it is a predominately US-based dating site, most of its users are Americans so it wouldn’t be a good idea to assume that their results apply equally to races and religions all across the world. In fact, it can reasonably be assumed that those who would use website for dating purposes are a self-selected group and generalizing outside of that group using this data would be misleading.

Caveats in mind, let’s have a look at the data. First, as a test, the site offers an analysis of match percentages by zodiac signs. Unsurprisingly, all the results are close to the average, meaning that astrological signs mean nothing at all in determining how compatible two people are. Next, the site offers a chart that differentiates between people by religious denomination. It turns out that the best matches are Jews and agnostics. Jewish men are even better matches for Muslim women than Muslim men are! The worst matches are Muslims of both genders and Hindu men. Atheists get along well with fellow atheists, agnostics, Buddhists and Jews, but less well with Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and Hindus.

However, while we can see huge swings in match percentages by religion, when we get to the race chart, it’s surprisingly even. Whites get a very slight boost, meaning that everyone tends to like them while it’s harder for blacks, Middle-Easterners and Indians to get matches, but generally the differences are tiny across the board. The overall lesson seems to be that religion matters a great deal when it comes to determining compatibility but races matter very little. Since religion is something that you choose while race isn’t, that’s just as it should be!